


Time isn't linear (it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey … stuff)

by Artemesis



Category: NCT (Band), WAYV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluffy Ending, Time Travel, Turn back time MV, based on mv, this is more serious than you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:20:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27007981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemesis/pseuds/Artemesis
Summary: "Ten fell. He was just in time to catch himself on his arms before he would have landed face first in the dirty rug laying on the floor. He stayed like that for a second, breath labored and arms shaking, letting his mind and body catch up with the fact that, no, there wasn’t a bullet in his chest. That had happened on the 17th of June. Or would happen. Would have happened? Whatever, travelling through time was shit to keep up with."(or, when Ten's friends are imprisoned in a lab, Ten has to jump through time, again and again and again, to try and free them)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	Time isn't linear (it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey … stuff)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there!  
> This work of FICTION is inspired by the teasers and MV for the Song "Turn back time" by WayV.  
> While the title (from Doctor Who) is quite funny, I have to admit that the Story is rather serious (but there is a happy end, I promise).  
> I was also a little bit inspired by the movie "X-Men: Days of future past" and the German book "Als die Zeit vom Himmel"; it is not necessary to know those, however you might find a few things familiar if you do :)
> 
> And lastly, special thanks to my lovely betas oswinosgoodsscarf and annicornflake!  
> English is not my fist language and even if those two helped me correct it, some things might have slipped our eyes ;)
> 
> Enjoy reading!

Ten fell. He was just in time to catch himself on his arms before he would have landed face first in the dirty rug laying on the floor. He stayed like that for a second, breath labored and arms shaking, letting his mind and body catch up with the fact that, no, there wasn’t a bullet in his chest. That had happened on the 17th of June. Or would happen. Would have happened? Whatever, travelling through time was shit to keep up with.

A glance at the big calendar hanging on the otherwise bare concrete wall displayed the date as the 3rd of June. Exactly the date he was going for. With a sigh he got up and sat back on the couch he had just fallen from. “Let loop number 79 begin”, he whispered to himself.

78 times. He had failed to save his friends 78 times now. At least this time he didn’t have to see one of them die, it had been him who took the bullet.

Where had he gone wrong this time? He had been optimistic, but his plan had failed again.

As always, he got quite melancholic at this point. He missed his friends, not that he would have admitted it. He wanted to be back five years ago, when he would pretend to be annoyed with Lucas, who would always leave his dirty dishes in the sink, when it was so little effort to _just put them directly into the dishwasher, god dammit_ ; and used to listen to Yangyang bickering with Guanheng, snapping at them to _be more quiet, will you? I am trying to read here!_ (but having to suppress a fond smile), while Sicheng and Xiaojun would just sit on the couch and laugh at his (faked) misery. Then he would sigh and shake his head and say something about _kids these days, never respecting their elders…_ , but he also wouldn’t get up to go somewhere else with more silence. At some point Kun would come in and stop Yangyang and Guanheng, who would both stick out their tongue towards the other like real adults while Kun wasn’t watching (but they would go back to cuddling anyway).

And then that one day, five years ago, when everything had been just like always (read: a mess), Kun had come in and after silencing Yangyang and Guanheng made an announcement: ”Guys, we were chosen for a special job.”

Their downfall had begun.

Of course, they hadn’t known then, but looking back, Ten noticed the red flags.

They had been working at a company as some kind of private soldiers for a while now. The big boss was apparently swimming in money and added whatever business branch to his company that he desired. Ten and the other six had belonged to the V-Unit of the security branch to act as guards or assistance when more security was needed at a place.

But this job had been different. The scientific branch had apparently made a new invention and their unit should be the first one to use it in a field test. That phrasing should have been the first warning sign: It was just a nicer version of saying that they were going to be used as lab rats to test something new. But they hadn’t seen that, too excited about being the chosen ones, since the scientists had made really cool gadgets in the past.

The next warning sign was that they were actually never told what _exactly_ it was that they were going to be used for. Not when they had accepted the job and not when they had been undergoing several physical and medical tests in that huge laboratory as preparation.

It was only when they had been standing in line in front of a white counter in said laboratory, on which seven syringes had been neatly placed that they were informed: They had wanted to permanently increase their powers and make some kind of super human.

That should have made them run. But of course, they hadn’t.

Instead they had all been injected with that clear purple liquid.

Ten had fainted on the spot and felt like someone had run him over with a truck, when he came to. Turns out, the serum was not doing exactly what it should have. It was not that it hadn’t increased their power, because it did. The tests showed clearly that they had become stronger, faster and had more stamina. But they had gotten a little more, than what they had bargained for.

It seemed as if every one of them had had developed an additional, personal gift:

Lucas had huge white wings that grew from his back and could carry him high into the sky.

Kun could invade the minds of others and had telekinesis.

Guanheng controlled water, earth, fire and air.

Yangyang drew the future or a possibility of it.

Xiaojun could bend metal to his will.

Sicheng could shapeshift. It didn’t matter if he wanted to change his hair color, turn into a tiger or a fucking dragon, he could do it all.

And Ten could jump through space and time, though his ability was limited to jumping back in time.

For a while all had gone well. They had been ecstatic to test their new powers and had been treated well. But then little by little it had gotten worse. The scientists had wanted to know why that change had happened and so they had been poked with needles and subjected to tests again and again. When they had refused, they had been forced.

By agreeing to the job, they had lost every freedom. They had literally become just a product to the company, one that it owned and could handle as it pleased.

So, one day, they had decided enough was enough and Ten had teleported them away, as far as he could, even if he had been unconscious for a week after that effort. They had disappeared and hidden from the company that wanted them back, had wanted their _products_ back. For some time, it worked just fine and they had developed a solid plan for when the company found them: Ten would jump back a few days and warn them and they would pack their stuff and leave for another hideout.

When Ten travelled through time he landed in his body where he had been at the moment he jumped back to. There wasn’t suddenly a second or third or whatever version of him walking around (“ _Thank god! One Ten is more than enough”, Xiaojun had joked when they tested him_ ). In theory he could travel through time _and_ space, his friends described it as the “past” Ten suddenly vanishing, but it cost just a lot of energy.

After a few months of handling it like that, a small seed of reluctance grew in the team whenever Ten had suddenly flinched in the middle of a conversation and announced that they had to leave. They had been getting tired of hiding and being on the run. A discussion would break out, to just stay and fight to finally get rid of their pursuers. In the end they would vote and Guanheng, Sicheng and Lucas would be in favor of fighting, what made sense, since their abilities were more offensive. Ten, Xiaojun and Yangyang on the other hand would vote to leave. In the end it had always been Kun to make the final decision. It had always been obvious that he was extremely torn between staying on the save side and taking their small chance to freedom. He had voted to leave.

It had gone on like that. Ten would go back and warn them, they would discuss the two options, but in the end Kun would decide to leave. Again and again and again.

At one point, Ten must have not been jumping back far enough, so that their pursuers had already found them and had just followed them from place to place when they had run again. Ten warning his team had just always kept them from actually attacking. His warnings had become more frequent and they had spent less and less time in one place.

But they had never been captured, Ten had become quite good at playing fate’s game. So, what had fate done? It had changed the rules.

You see, time isn’t linear, it is not a straight line one could follow; Ten had learned that long ago. Every time Ten jumped back in time, he caused a ripple to go through the fields of time, a butterfly effect so to say. So, in every loop, there might be a tiny, _tiny_ difference to the previous one. Small things, such as a kid at the other end of the world choosing a different flavor of ice cream, a raindrop running down a window taking a different path.

Or a leader, torn between two options, choosing the other one.

That fateful day, Kun had voted to stay and fight.

And fought, they had. They had given their everything, but they had been too few and too worn out.

They had lost and Ten had jumped back again.

He had tried to talk them into running again, but the others hadn’t seen the massacre, that would happen if they stayed. Ten was always the only one remembering previous loops, for the others it had been kind of overwritten. Kun was the only one who sometimes felt some kind of Deja-vu.

Lucas, Guanheng, Sicheng and Kun had been optimistic and maybe also a little desperate to just stop running and they had dismissed his warning.

They had been captured again.

And again.

And again.

After several times of trying to avoid the fight to no avail, Ten had had to admit defeat. There had just been no way around it. Fate had one this round. But Ten had refused to give up, he just _had_ to save his brothers. If he couldn’t find a way to keep from getting captured, he would have to let them be taken and subsequently break them out.

He had made a hard decision.

The next time they were losing the fight, he had travelled through time _and_ space.

He had sunk against a tree in the middle of the nearby forest, the first place he could think of. He had sat there, hidden, while his team had probably been wondering where he had vanished off to when the fight had been just about to start. Ten had cried at the thought that at this moment in an empty warehouse his friends, his _brothers_ were being captured and dragged back into that damn lab.

_Now is not the time to cry,_ he had chastised himself. He would break his family out of that hellhole and ruin that company.

And so he had planned.

It had been fairly easy to confirm that they had been brought back into the facility that he already knew. Ten had set himself up in an abandoned one-room apartment in the shady part of the city, as near to the lab as he had dared. Apparently, they now had been seen as security risks rather than lab rats, constantly being kept under lock and key.

Ten had to admit that the first time he had gone in, he had been quite unprepared. It hadn’t ended well (meaning he had been shot thrice), but he had jumped back and had tried again. Every time he had collected new information, new ways to modify his plan. He had nailed the perfect date to break in down to the 17th of June, he knew how much time he had before the cameras would notice him and he knew the schedules of the guards.

After a few tries he had had no problem of getting in. Leaving the CCTV working was sort of risky, since it would trigger an alarm at some point and therefore limit the time he had to free the others; but he had no way of accessing their systems to loop their cameras. So yeah, getting in had been no problem. It had been the getting out that had proved difficult. He had thought he had a good plan, but somehow, he just wouldn’t succeed.

Ten had tried to modify his plan; he had always gotten in and to his team members, and with every loop he managed it faster and faster. Since he figured that part of the plan was good, he had tried to change the order in which he would open their cells.

The cell block consisted of solid concrete wall on both sides of a narrow hallway. The cells sat across from each other and had a sliding door made of thick glass that couldn’t be broken even with their enhanced strength (Ten had tried, but then he had figured stealing a badge would be more useful). The worst part was what was behind them. The area between a concrete wall and the door was fairly small, probably just for when they were given food or being tested on. The back wall was made of concrete and could be lowered into the ground to make way into a bigger cell that was different for every one of his friends, adapted to their abilities. They honestly felt like they were enclosures for animals. What he had seen in them broke his heart every time.

Lucas was just apathetically laying on a slim plank bed attached to the wall. Where once his majestic white wings had been were only bloody wounds between his shoulder blades left.

Kun’s cell had been turned into a padded cell like one would find it in a mental hospital. His ability had always held a high risk of Kun going insane if he didn’t use it with his mind, becoming like an additional muscle that withered away if it wasn’t trained; something the scientists obviously hadn’t allowed him to do. The padded walls of the cell had been ripped open and Kun could be found sitting in a corner turning over a shard of what once must have been a two-way mirror (now there was only concrete), giggling madly to himself.

Guanheng’s cell looked the most like an animal’s enclosure. It must have been a bare cell like Lucas’ with the walls being strengthened with metal to keep Guanheng from influencing the stone, but due to his ability, the whole ground was covered in grass and even a small tree (how had he managed to grow those?) with what seemed to be a small pool underneath it. Guanheng usually was just floating in it, staring at the wall where the metal looked partially warped from being attacked with fire.

Yangyang’s cell was covered in paint. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling was covered with different drawings of chalk, spray paint and many more. The drawings were all over each other to the point where they were all indecipherable and could not be told apart. Yangyang was usually crouched down, scribbling line after line with seemingly no pattern onto the floor with red chalk.

Xiaojun was held in a cell, similar to Lucas’. It was completely bare, with only the same narrow plank bed. He was just sitting there, sometimes repeatedly banging his arm against the wall.

Sicheng was maybe held in the most gruesome way. In the high room there was an elevated grid platform with a stool that looked more like a throne made of concrete. In that throne Sicheng was sitting, shackled down with dozens of heavy titanium chains, the look of his face evidence of him constantly being drugged up.

Ten had seen it again and again, the pictures barely changing with every loop. Now, in loop number 79 he got up from the couch to stand in front of a large table that was full of different building plans of the facility. He would need a new plan to get them out and he had only two weeks to find it. There was only one exit displayed on the blueprints and in case of an alarm being triggered, a shit ton of guards would immediately be sent there. Ten had already used several different routes towards it, but they had all been either too long or got too close to the guards or didn’t work for any other reason. Just what did he overlook?

He had even considered going back far enough to be captured with his brothers, but since the problem was going _in_ not _out_ , it probably wouldn’t make a difference. It laid too far back anyway, Ten would only get to deaths door step trying to jump back that far and afterwards he would be only a prisoner, just like his team members, with no way out.

Frustrated, Ten threw the notebook that he used to write down everything that happened in previous loops against the wall. It landed on the floor with a clatter, but Ten didn’t feel better. Especially since there was no Kun to calm him down and tell him _the book didn’t do you any wrong, Ten. Calm down, everything will be okay_. No, Kun was sitting in that damn cell, slowly going mad and, of course, Ten was worried about all of his brothers, but he couldn’t stop wondering if there was even anything left of the Kun he knew.

_Bullshit, I will free them and I will find a way to help him, to help_ them _!_

Determined, Ten unrolled the blueprint that had rolled up when he threw the book that had kept it from doing so. Suddenly he noticed something. There, on the side of the blueprint between the thumb and index finger of his left hand was a small symbol drawn in the middle of the boiler room. It had previously been hidden beneath the book and Ten had never given that particular room much thought since it was a dead end.

But that symbol, looking like a kid would draw a sun with an additional circle around the “rays”; it rang a bell. He had seen that symbol before, but where?

With the feeling that this symbol was somehow important, he desperately searched his memory. Just where had he seen it? Where-

Yangyang’s cell.

There was barely anything recognizable in the cell, but that symbol had stood out, being drawn again and again in several of the layers of drawings.

If Yangyang, who could draw the future, had drawn that symbol so often, it had to be crucial for the future - hopefully their future. But it could not be a coincidence that the symbol happened to pop up in the blueprint _and_ in Yangyang’s drawings.

A quick check of the legend made Ten stop abruptly.

The symbol marked the connection to the local canalization.

Ten had found another way out.

Another round of planning started as Ten tried to get his hands on a plan of the underground. After days of searching and using (slightly shady, but he couldn’t be picky) methods he had his hands on an old plan. There was a small chance of it being outdated, but he decided to take the risk. The plan wasn’t _that_ old and since building new tunnels didn’t just happen overnight, he thought it would be okay.

Finally, the 17th of June had come (for the 79th time).

At three in the morning, Ten was perched in the shadow of the big warehouse across from the facility, that conveniently had no security cameras itself. He had three minutes before the next guard would come, until then he had time to break the local camera. His research had identified it as the perfect target. In a tree that was planted near it to (unsuccessfully) battle the dreary atmosphere of the industrial area, a squirrel had made its home. Said squirrel apparently rather disliked the camera and frequently threw nuts, stones or whatever there was available at it and broke it. Hence, nobody on duty was immediately alarmed when the camera didn’t send a picture. Ten had named his unexpected friend Jisung and in every loop left some nuts for him to find in his hiding place.

Ten carefully selected a good stone (at this point it was always the same, he had found the perfect one in loop 38) and threw it at the camera. He missed, so he jumped back a minute, picked the stone up again and tried one more time.

On the fourth try, there was a satisfying shatter and the red light on the camera went out. Ten checked his watch. In two minutes, the guard on duty would come here for his round and exactly 27 seconds after he turned around the corner, he would trip and dirty himself with his sandwich. He would angrily pat his uniform to get rid of any crumbs, thereby his badge would fall down without him noticing.

It all happened exactly as it had every loop before and Ten hurriedly picked the badge up from the floor and entered the building before the guard would notice the loss and returned to search for it three minutes and 42 seconds later.

Ten walked through the hallways at a fast pace, but not running so as to not alarm anyone. In a bare white hallway that looked like every other one, he ducked into a junction just before a scientist would walk through the corridor that crossed the hallway. The scientist didn’t notice him (like in loop number 43). He silently counted to seven (then the scientist would be far enough away) and got back into the main hallway to turn to the left, into the corridor from which the scientist had arrived.

The badge granted him access through a thick door, similar to the one of a vault. The hallway he was now in was not white and empty. No, it had the grey concrete walls he knew and seven cells, three on the left (the last one was empty) and four on the right; not across from each other but offset.

Just the place he wanted to be.

The first one he needed to free was Xiaojun. He was one of those who were lucid and his ability to bend metal came in handy to free Sicheng from his shackles. Xiaojun’s cell was the second on the left, so he had to skip Lucas’ and Sicheng’s cells, even if it hurt him to leave them behind. They would be freed in just a few minutes.

Xiaojun was just sitting at the wall staring at nothing, only reacting after Ten had opened the sliding door and silently called his name.

“Ten?! How did you-”

“Not now, we have to hurry, come on!”, Ten whisper-yelled towards him.

Xiaojun moved to free Sicheng in the cell on the right of his (like he did every time), but Ten, without turning his head, grabbed his arm and dragging him to the second cell on the left wall.

“Guanheng first.”

Fortunately, he didn’t argue (he never did).

Ten gently shoved Xiaojun against the wall next to the door of the cell and quickly stepped next to him after opening the door, just in time to dodge the fire ball thrown at him. Then he ducked into the entrance to wave at Guanheng, indicating him to keep silent and beckoning him over. Even if Guanheng just climbed out of the little pool he was completely dry.

_Two out, four to go_ , Ten thought.

They hurried to the first cell on the right wall, coming across Sicheng’s cell again, but they had to free Lucas next. Lucas got up from the plank bed and winced when he had to move his back. He seemed weak and tired but overjoyed to be with his brothers again.

The moment Ten opened the door of Yangyang’s cell, the alarms went up. Sirens started blaring and the red light went on and off. In that moment, when the red light was on, you could see something strange in Yangyang’s cell, just like in every loop before. There were dozens of Vs drawn across every surface, only visible in the light of the alarms (god knows how Yangyang got that type of paint). Ten dismissed it, he had other things to worry about at the moment; there were still Sicheng and Kun to free.

First, they went to Sicheng. Xiaojun freed him from the shackles, but there was still the problem that he was heavily drugged.

“Lucas, can you support him?” (It was a rhetorical question, Ten already knew Lucas could help him.) Even with his injuries he was the one closest to Sicheng’s height (they were both fucking giants) and thus could support his weight the best.

With a nod Lucas laid Sicheng’s arm around his shoulder. Fortunately, Sicheng was still lucid enough to stand and walk with the additional help.

Only Kun left and they had to hurry if they wanted to reach the boiler room without being captured.

Kun didn’t seem to have noticed anything, only turning the shard in his hands again and again. He looked up when Xiaojun crouched down in front of him, but seemingly looked right through him. At least he didn’t attack them and made no fuss when Guanheng put him on his back.

Like that they left the hallway. Ten led the way with Yangyang right behind him, Lucas supporting Sicheng, Guanheng carrying Kun and Xiaojun being the back marker.

After studying the blueprints and running through these corridors so often Ten new every turn and every corner. On their way to the boiler room they only stumbled into guards twice. The first time, Guanheng and Xiaojun worked together to bring the ceiling down onto them: the second time, before one of them could act, the guards just broke down, unconscious, having been knocked out by some kind of mental road roller. Kun didn’t show any sign of being lucid again, but maybe he subconsciously knew they needed him.

Whatever it was, they weren’t found again and Xiaojun didn’t get stabbed (loop number 38), Lucas didn’t get electrocuted (loop number 51), Yangyang wasn’t shot (loop number 64) and neither was Ten (that happened too often to remember in which loops).

They reached the boiler room out of breath but unharmed. To reach the trap door that would lead them to the canalization, they had to move an oil tank, but afterwards it was easy to open it. It was slightly difficult to maneuver Sicheng and Kun down there, but they managed.

Ten closed the trap door and turned to Guanheng. “What do you think of burning the whole place down?”

“Oh, _god_ , yes!”

After a moment of concentration, several explosions could be heard when Guanheng set the oil tanks in the boiler rooms on fire. Ten had studied the construction of the old facility; it would burn down in no time and all the records of the _inventions_ would burn with it. And since all the information was top secret, there were no copies in the cloud: their backup consisted of rooms full of paper files.

All of that would go up in flames.

They kept walking as fast as they could, not yet feeling safe. After what felt like a mile, they came to a … room of sorts? At the opposite wall there were nine tunnels leading into darkness. This had not been on the plan Ten had studied. Where should they go? There was still a small possibility that someone was following them through the tunnels, and they better hurry, but Ten didn’t know where to lead them. The tunnels all looked the same apart from little brass plaques that labeled them with roman numbers, one to nine from left to right.

Ten’s gaze flickered to the label of the fifth tunnel and something clicked.

The roman five was symbolized by a V. The same letter Yangyang had drawn over and over, in a way only Ten could see when he broke them out. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

Determined, Ten led them into the fifth tunnel.

They walked for hours and Ten just began to doubt his choice, when they reached a dead end with a ladder that led high up to a gully cover. One after one they climbed up the ladder, carefully lifting Kun and Sicheng through the opening.

It was already light outside.

They had made it.

They were free.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After that eventful morning, they contacted an old friend from a government agency and got a whole bunch of people arrested. Apparently even without counting them being kidnapped and experimented on (they claimed the experiments had had no effect, there was no evidence left to prove otherwise) the company had been involved in some illegal shit that now caught up with it.

The transition to going back to normal wasn’t easy. They had been on the run for almost four years and had spent three months in cruel imprisonment. For Ten it had felt like half an eternity of trying and failing to save his brothers.

But they had each other, and they got better. Since they were free to use their own names and bank accounts again, Ten dragged them all to therapy, above all Kun, and slowly but steadily they became themselves again. They were no machines - it was a marathon and no sprint and there were relapses - but it went uphill.

Three years passed and found Ten sitting in a comfy couch with a book in his hands. Guanheng and Yangyang bickered about which one was the better Avatar, Aang or Korra. Ten knew they both enjoyed both series; they were just bickering for the sake of it.

Xiaojun helped Lucas groom his wings (thank god he could retract those or it would be difficult to go outside) in a corner and Sicheng just sat in the armchair listening to the two squabblers, interjecting with a comment in their “argument” from time to time.

“Do you have to be so loud? I’m trying to read.” Ten waved his book demonstratively, pretending to be annoyed. They just kept bickering until Kun came in with a fond smile and handed cupcakes around. That effectively shut them up.

Ten didn’t have to relive a day again and again since that 17th of June. He didn’t need to jump at all (except that one time he accidentally broke Kun’s favorite mug, but he never had to know about that), everything was fine as it was. He was happy.

They were all together.


End file.
